ENGINE FOR GROWTH
Alistair Darling’s critique of the government’s economic policy (March) is misguided. A year ago, Britain’s AAA credit rating was under threat because of Labour’s economic mismanagement. As Lord Myners put it last August: “the mistake we made as a government was to run large deficits in the middle part of the decade when the economy was clearly running at full capacity.”
George Osborne had no choice but to come up with a comprehensive deficit reduction plan—not to merely halve the deficit over four years, but eliminate it. The government has also set up the office for budget responsibility, to ensure we have independent economic forecasts. This has secured the UK’s AAA credit rating, while the Bank of England has kept interest rates low. These are the prerequisites for sustainable growth.
But we must go further. This is why corporation tax is coming down; why we have substantially reversed Mr Darling’s proposed jobs tax; why we have reduced the burden of unnecessary regulation; why David Cameron is promoting British business around the world; and why the chancellor’s latest budget is strongly pro-growth.
Darling takes far too pessimistic a view of the private sector’s capacity to grow. Between 1992 and 1998, total employment rose by 1.3m while government employment contracted by 0.5m. The recovery is likely to be choppy, but we are committed to making it possible for the private sector to again be the engine of British growth.
Lord SassoonCommercial secretary to the Treasury
NOT THE HEIRS TO BLAIR
James Purnell (March) is right to warn Labour of the dangers in appearing opposed to public service reform, or of returning to a comfort zone. But the expensive reorganisation of the NHS and Michael Gove’s free schools programme are not a continuation of Labour’s successful approach; they are a fundamental break with it.
Take Labour’s academy programme: a pragmatic approach to raising standards in areas of educational under-performance. By contrast, Michael Gove’s academy and free school programme is ideological. He has no clear plan for raising standards. Allowing new schools to open anywhere, in converted buildings with unqualified teachers and no regard to national pay agreements, could destabilise existing provision. It also can’t be right that the government is showering what little capital funding it has on a small number of favoured schools.
Contrary to claims from the free school lobby, I would not seek to close successful free schools for ideological reasons. Purnell may be right that some free schools may be successful. Yet the true test of whether they are in the wider public interest is not to be found in the results of an individual school, but in the effect on standards and achievement across the wider family of schools.
By portraying themselves as “heirs to Blair,” ministers are making a fraudulent claim for the centre ground.
Andy Burnham MP (Lab)Shadow secretary of state for education
EQUAL DISCRIMINATION
Richard Dawkins (March) claims that a woman is less likely to be a suicide bomber if she isn’t dressed as a Muslim. If I were Muslim, I would find that hugely offensive. Wouldn’t you? I thought Dawkins discriminated against all religions equally.
Alex KrohnVia the Prospect website
PALESTINE—NO SURPRISE
Tony Blair’s shock (March) at how much more he knows about the situation in Israel and Palestine now than when he was prime minister is unsurprising. Government ministers visit, but their time is mostly spent being ushered from Tel Aviv airport to a meeting in Jerusalem to a meeting in Ramallah. You can only understand the real facts on the ground when you experience the checkpoints and roadblocks, see how illegal settlements in the West Bank are carving up any possible future state, and witness how 1.5m Gazans are living in an open prison. Politicians must do this, and then ask: what are we going to do about it?
Richard Burden MP (Lab)Chair of Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group
LOST FOR WORDS
Thank you to David Mitchell (March) for speaking up for us stammerers. He is right there is no cure, although I had some useful speech therapy as a teenager in the 1970s. One of the key points was that “technical fixes” are counterproductive, because avoiding certain words or sounds reinforces your fear of them. This is easier said than done of course—if you’ll excuse the pun. Over time, I have learned not to be ashamed of my stammering, and this, more than anything else, has enabled me develop a career as a university lecturer. Such a job would have been unthinkable in my hellish younger days, when even answering the phone or trying to answer a simple question in class was torture. I was not surprised by the comment of one reader, who had heard Mitchell speaking fluently. One of the many unknown truths about stammerers is that we all speak fluently sometimes.
Elizabeth JacksonSt Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
DICTATORS R US
Never before has the Middle East felt so close to Belarus. For us, the events in Egypt and Tunisia have become sources of hope and wistfulness. Our own “Days of Rage” lasted only a few hours and ended in a brutal crackdown on 19th December. And our dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has been closing ranks with his brethren: Kyrgyzstan’s deposed autocrat, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has found refuge in Minsk; Havana’s foreign minister recently visited “Europe’s Cuba,” as the Polish foreign minister described Belarus; and there have been reports of Libyan aircraft landing in Minsk. For now, the world’s attention is elsewhere, but events in the Arab world should offer Lukashenko an unsettling reminder of his own possible fate.
Iryna VidanavaEditor, 34 Multimedia Magazine, Belarus
A CONCERNED SON
David Goodhart (March) rightly notes that Georgia does not have a fully independent judiciary. But the problem goes deeper than this. Georgia’s government has utter contempt for the rule of law, and uses the threat of criminal prosecution whenever it wishes to avoid its commercial obligations.
My father, Rony Fuchs, is currently in prison in Georgia accused of bribery. He was invited to the country for a signing ceremony planned to settle a long-running commercial dispute he has had with the Georgian government. My father had won his case in an international tribunal (ICSID), and Georgia was seeking to reverse the judgment against it. But rather than risk a negative result, high-ranking government officials led my father to believe they were seeking a compromise, and then arrested him.
Compromise is not in the character of those now running Georgia. So long as the legal system is used as an arm of the state, it will not be a safe place for any investor.
Jonathan D FuchsTel Aviv, Israel
BAD INVESTMENT ADVICE
Jim Rogers (February) ignores the fact that China is desperately short of natural resources such as water, oil, and important metals. Grain is a problem too, as illustrated by the drought in the north. The Chinese have a remarkable savings rate because they have nowhere to put their money except the property bubble, which will explode one day soon with frightening consequences. They also save because there is no public healthcare to speak of. Rogers advises investors to “learn Mandarin.” My advice: learn China.
Mark KittoMoganshan, China
RULES FOR CITIES
James Crabtree (March) and Edward Glaeser are right: governments should help people, rather than failing corporations or shrinking cities. If a city has bad rules and ends up being congested, polluted, crime ridden, or plagued by a mismatch between workers and jobs, people should not be encouraged to move there; equally, local governments should be rewarded for developing rules that help structure how people interact. Workers, consumers, entrepreneurs and students all benefit when they can interact in bigger and denser cities. (Remarkably, even the environment benefits too.) Britain should increase competition among the cities it already has, and let the best get bigger. Meanwhile the developing world, which faces a net increase of 3-4bn urban dwellers this century, must build new cities—and increase the size of the most successful existing ones.
Paul RomerNYU Stern School of Business
A QUESTION OF SONG
As a Welshman who sings heartily at the rugby, I’d like David Goldblatt (March) to know that we sing not because we have the most at stake; rather, singing is one element of the day’s contest we know we can always win (case in point: Twickenham, South Stand, February 2010). Goldblatt also fails to note the unfairness of England’s team singing “God Save the Queen.” As a patriotic Brit, I feel this is my anthem too and, like many Welsh and perhaps Scots, I’m aggrieved that an important symbol of my British identity is routinely misappropriated. Perhaps England should line up to “Candle in the Wind”; an emotional song, penned by an Englishman and with a title that reflects their real chances of winning the World Cup.
Richard MolletChiddingfold, Surrey
Have your say: letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Alistair Darling’s critique of the government’s economic policy (March) is misguided. A year ago, Britain’s AAA credit rating was under threat because of Labour’s economic mismanagement. As Lord Myners put it last August: “the mistake we made as a government was to run large deficits in the middle part of the decade when the economy was clearly running at full capacity.”
George Osborne had no choice but to come up with a comprehensive deficit reduction plan—not to merely halve the deficit over four years, but eliminate it. The government has also set up the office for budget responsibility, to ensure we have independent economic forecasts. This has secured the UK’s AAA credit rating, while the Bank of England has kept interest rates low. These are the prerequisites for sustainable growth.
But we must go further. This is why corporation tax is coming down; why we have substantially reversed Mr Darling’s proposed jobs tax; why we have reduced the burden of unnecessary regulation; why David Cameron is promoting British business around the world; and why the chancellor’s latest budget is strongly pro-growth.
Darling takes far too pessimistic a view of the private sector’s capacity to grow. Between 1992 and 1998, total employment rose by 1.3m while government employment contracted by 0.5m. The recovery is likely to be choppy, but we are committed to making it possible for the private sector to again be the engine of British growth.
Lord SassoonCommercial secretary to the Treasury
NOT THE HEIRS TO BLAIR
James Purnell (March) is right to warn Labour of the dangers in appearing opposed to public service reform, or of returning to a comfort zone. But the expensive reorganisation of the NHS and Michael Gove’s free schools programme are not a continuation of Labour’s successful approach; they are a fundamental break with it.
Take Labour’s academy programme: a pragmatic approach to raising standards in areas of educational under-performance. By contrast, Michael Gove’s academy and free school programme is ideological. He has no clear plan for raising standards. Allowing new schools to open anywhere, in converted buildings with unqualified teachers and no regard to national pay agreements, could destabilise existing provision. It also can’t be right that the government is showering what little capital funding it has on a small number of favoured schools.
Contrary to claims from the free school lobby, I would not seek to close successful free schools for ideological reasons. Purnell may be right that some free schools may be successful. Yet the true test of whether they are in the wider public interest is not to be found in the results of an individual school, but in the effect on standards and achievement across the wider family of schools.
By portraying themselves as “heirs to Blair,” ministers are making a fraudulent claim for the centre ground.
Andy Burnham MP (Lab)Shadow secretary of state for education
EQUAL DISCRIMINATION
Richard Dawkins (March) claims that a woman is less likely to be a suicide bomber if she isn’t dressed as a Muslim. If I were Muslim, I would find that hugely offensive. Wouldn’t you? I thought Dawkins discriminated against all religions equally.
Alex KrohnVia the Prospect website
PALESTINE—NO SURPRISE
Tony Blair’s shock (March) at how much more he knows about the situation in Israel and Palestine now than when he was prime minister is unsurprising. Government ministers visit, but their time is mostly spent being ushered from Tel Aviv airport to a meeting in Jerusalem to a meeting in Ramallah. You can only understand the real facts on the ground when you experience the checkpoints and roadblocks, see how illegal settlements in the West Bank are carving up any possible future state, and witness how 1.5m Gazans are living in an open prison. Politicians must do this, and then ask: what are we going to do about it?
Richard Burden MP (Lab)Chair of Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group
LOST FOR WORDS
Thank you to David Mitchell (March) for speaking up for us stammerers. He is right there is no cure, although I had some useful speech therapy as a teenager in the 1970s. One of the key points was that “technical fixes” are counterproductive, because avoiding certain words or sounds reinforces your fear of them. This is easier said than done of course—if you’ll excuse the pun. Over time, I have learned not to be ashamed of my stammering, and this, more than anything else, has enabled me develop a career as a university lecturer. Such a job would have been unthinkable in my hellish younger days, when even answering the phone or trying to answer a simple question in class was torture. I was not surprised by the comment of one reader, who had heard Mitchell speaking fluently. One of the many unknown truths about stammerers is that we all speak fluently sometimes.
Elizabeth JacksonSt Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
DICTATORS R US
Never before has the Middle East felt so close to Belarus. For us, the events in Egypt and Tunisia have become sources of hope and wistfulness. Our own “Days of Rage” lasted only a few hours and ended in a brutal crackdown on 19th December. And our dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has been closing ranks with his brethren: Kyrgyzstan’s deposed autocrat, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has found refuge in Minsk; Havana’s foreign minister recently visited “Europe’s Cuba,” as the Polish foreign minister described Belarus; and there have been reports of Libyan aircraft landing in Minsk. For now, the world’s attention is elsewhere, but events in the Arab world should offer Lukashenko an unsettling reminder of his own possible fate.
Iryna VidanavaEditor, 34 Multimedia Magazine, Belarus
A CONCERNED SON
David Goodhart (March) rightly notes that Georgia does not have a fully independent judiciary. But the problem goes deeper than this. Georgia’s government has utter contempt for the rule of law, and uses the threat of criminal prosecution whenever it wishes to avoid its commercial obligations.
My father, Rony Fuchs, is currently in prison in Georgia accused of bribery. He was invited to the country for a signing ceremony planned to settle a long-running commercial dispute he has had with the Georgian government. My father had won his case in an international tribunal (ICSID), and Georgia was seeking to reverse the judgment against it. But rather than risk a negative result, high-ranking government officials led my father to believe they were seeking a compromise, and then arrested him.
Compromise is not in the character of those now running Georgia. So long as the legal system is used as an arm of the state, it will not be a safe place for any investor.
Jonathan D FuchsTel Aviv, Israel
BAD INVESTMENT ADVICE
Jim Rogers (February) ignores the fact that China is desperately short of natural resources such as water, oil, and important metals. Grain is a problem too, as illustrated by the drought in the north. The Chinese have a remarkable savings rate because they have nowhere to put their money except the property bubble, which will explode one day soon with frightening consequences. They also save because there is no public healthcare to speak of. Rogers advises investors to “learn Mandarin.” My advice: learn China.
Mark KittoMoganshan, China
RULES FOR CITIES
James Crabtree (March) and Edward Glaeser are right: governments should help people, rather than failing corporations or shrinking cities. If a city has bad rules and ends up being congested, polluted, crime ridden, or plagued by a mismatch between workers and jobs, people should not be encouraged to move there; equally, local governments should be rewarded for developing rules that help structure how people interact. Workers, consumers, entrepreneurs and students all benefit when they can interact in bigger and denser cities. (Remarkably, even the environment benefits too.) Britain should increase competition among the cities it already has, and let the best get bigger. Meanwhile the developing world, which faces a net increase of 3-4bn urban dwellers this century, must build new cities—and increase the size of the most successful existing ones.
Paul RomerNYU Stern School of Business
A QUESTION OF SONG
As a Welshman who sings heartily at the rugby, I’d like David Goldblatt (March) to know that we sing not because we have the most at stake; rather, singing is one element of the day’s contest we know we can always win (case in point: Twickenham, South Stand, February 2010). Goldblatt also fails to note the unfairness of England’s team singing “God Save the Queen.” As a patriotic Brit, I feel this is my anthem too and, like many Welsh and perhaps Scots, I’m aggrieved that an important symbol of my British identity is routinely misappropriated. Perhaps England should line up to “Candle in the Wind”; an emotional song, penned by an Englishman and with a title that reflects their real chances of winning the World Cup.
Richard MolletChiddingfold, Surrey
Have your say: letters@prospect-magazine.co.uk
